Letters: we have let down white, working-class boys
The lost boys Sir: The only statement in your powerful leading article (‘Boy trouble’, 17 August) which can be challenged…
Should Labour be messing with the school curriculum?
Labour’s new education secretary wishes, as usual, to change everything. She might consider the advice of the Roman educationist Quintilian…
Is the CCRC fit to decide on Lucy Letby’s appeal?
Whatever happened to the likes of the BBC’s Rough Justice and Channel 4’s Trial and Error? Why did human rights…
The song of the bearded seal and other marvels
Amorina Kingdon explores the extraordinary range of sounds beneath the sea, from the fluting calls of the larger mammals to the hums and moans of fish
A romantic obsession: Precipice, by Robert Harris, reviewed
In the build-up to the Great War another drama unfolds, as the Prime Minister H.H. Asquith is seen to be distracted from politics by his infatuation with the beautiful Venetia Stanley
More curious canine incidents: Dogs and Monsters, by Mark Haddon, reviewed
Mesmerising accounts of dogs feature in these latest stories, including Actaeon’s tragic hounds, St Antony’s comforting mutt and Laika, the husky hurled into space
A choice of thrillers for end of summer escapism
Charlotte Philby’s appropriately titled The End of Summer skilfully explores the strains of a double life. Also reviewed: Ajay Close, Charlotte Vassell and Giuseppe Miale di Mauro
How weird was Oliver Cromwell?
The pious people’s champion was not only a sadist and ruthless self-promoter; he could also indulge in infantile horseplay during the pressurised period leading up to the regicide
Can W.H. Auden be called a war poet?
Though Auden maintained that the Great War had little effect on him, its catastrophe haunts his early poetry and shaped his anxiety about what it meant to be English
Two young men in flight: Partita and A Winter in Zürau, by Gabriel Josipovici reviewed
Kafka, spitting blood, escapes Prague to join his sister in Bohemia, and a fictional lover flees the wrath of an outraged husband in Josipovici’s delightful two-in-one trick
Iris Apfel’s talent to amaze
Instantly recognisable with her cascades of necklaces and startling colours (‘pastels make me nervous’), the interior decorator would achieve real fame with a Met exhibition in 2005
